The Islanders have played one game of 82 and, stereotypically, they won it 3-2.
No one is going to make any sweeping conclusions, nor should they.
But when the second line gets on the scoreboard twice and the first line counts itself unlucky to not join them, with a 12-5 scoring chance margin and 4-1 high-danger chance margin, that means the top six performed at a level it didn’t usually reach in previous years, at least as a collective.
The Islanders have a well-earned reputation for gutting out 2-1 and 3-2 games, and that has not come from high-powered offense.
If the top six play 81 more games like it did the first against Buffalo, though, that just might change.
“I think we have the potential to do more,” Brock Nelson, who scored the opening goal on Saturday, told The Post following Monday’s practice. “I think that’s something we focus on, trying to generate more chances and offense and capitalizing on that. I think we have the guys to do it.
“Obviously, Bo [Horvat] is a scorer, [Mat Barzal] an elite player, playmaker, [Kyle Palmieri] can score, [Pierre Engvall] can score, [Simon Holmstrom’s] pretty good there, too. Finding his way, he’s a highly skilled guy. I think we have a number of guys who can score.”
The man Nelson left out, of course, is the Islanders’ leading scorer each of the past two seasons: himself.
The point, however, stands.
A wholesale change in identity is not coming, but the deadline additions of Horvat and Engvall shifted this team’s offensive ceiling upward.
That didn’t quite come to fruition last season, since Barzal played just seven games with Horvat before getting hurt.
The signs were there, though, in how well the second line of Engvall, Nelson and Palmieri performed once together.
But if everyone stays healthy now, and if the second line keeps rolling, and if the chances Horvat and Barzal created on Saturday start turning into goals, then there are going to be a lot fewer 2-1 games.
Maybe that is one too many ifs, but it doesn’t feel like an altogether implausible ask.
If anything, it seems like a scenario that general manager Lou Lamoriello very much believes in, given his lack of moves over the summer.
“They’ve got a lot of ability,” Cal Clutterbuck said of the top six. “I think the more time they spend playing together — the potential, I think, has always been there. I think it’s just a question of them getting used to each other and getting healthy.”
There is also the fact that, prior to Horvat and Engvall’s acquisitions, the Islanders did not really have a clear-cut, consistent top two lines.
Coach Lane Lambert spent a lot of last season juggling his lineups — some of which was within the normal course of injuries and experimentation and some of which felt like trying in vain to fit a puzzle together without all the pieces.
The lines right now will change at some point, and there is some question specifically as to whether Simon Holmstrom will stick around with Horvat and Barzal, though he acquitted himself well against Buffalo.
At least ahead of Tuesday’s game against Arizona, there are significantly fewer questions about the slotting of the forward group than there were for the entire first half of last season.
That is no small detail when the two pieces that helped complete the puzzle, Horvat and Engvall, both joined midway through last season and still have more chemistry to build.
“I think we have a lot of talent in the room that can score,” Engvall told The Post. “I think we took a step and got better and better. So I think and I hope that we’re gonna be better and score more goals. I think it’s up to us to do it.”
